“What does killing us prove to him, Massimo?” I asked sharply. “We didn’t do anything to your mother or to you. We didn’t even know we had another brother.” I paused and took a deep breath, studying the man in front of me. “Remember the night at the club. You had said you had feelings for me.” I wanted to puke at the thought. I’d been flattered then. My ego had gotten a bit of a boost from the fact that he’d had a crush on me and that Lorenzo had noticed enough to put an end to it. “How long have you known that you were my brother?”
His lips tightened, and his nostrils flared in anger. When he spoke, it was through clenched teeth, “I’ve known since I was a kid, having to deal with a mom who couldn’t stay off the drugs because your father threw her out like trash, but kept coming back for more, even when she had someone else who wanted her. He took away the one chance my mom and I had at happiness, so I’m going to take everything he cares about away from him.”
I laughed humorlessly. “Really? You think he cares about us?” I shook my head and took a step forward. “If he cared, why did he sell me to the cartel, Massimo?” I nodded when he looked like he had paused to consider my words. “That’s the reason Lorenzo and I got married, to protect me from being forced into a marriage with the heir of the Arias cartel.”
I ignored Gia and Nic’s sounds of being upset behind me and continued on. Massimo thought we lived the high life under our dad’s thumb. We had money, yes, but that was never without strings attached, and it came at the price of our freedom. “When I was a kid, we were playing hide and seek. I went into our father’s office to hide. I knocked the computer off the desk by accident, and Lorenzo covered for me, saying he did it. You know what our father did?” I pressed the question, but didn’t really give him a chance to answer. “He beat Lorenzo so badly that he still bears the scars on his body under all of his tattoos.” I could see him wavering, and I was biding time until Lorenzo and Romeo could get to us. I hoped they were almost here. I prayed they were almost here.
I took a deep breath and continued, “You had it hard, Massimo. Nobody is denying that fact, but just because we had money growing up and lived in this house, that doesn’t mean we had it easy either, because I can tell you, we didn’t.”
“She’s right.” I jerked my head toward the sound of Lorenzo’s voice. Immediately, relief and fear washed over me. His handswere up, showing that he wasn’t a threat to Massimo as he moved into the living room from the kitchen. He moved at a snail’s pace, but kept speaking to keep Massimo’s attention on him and off of us. I wanted to jump in front of him, but he would never allow me to do it. He’d push me behind his back and shield me from harm, leaving himself open and vulnerable to attack.
Lorenzo continued toward us slowly, never taking his eyes off Massimo. “I’m guessing you know we went to see your mother, and that’s why you’re doing this now?”
“I put a camera in the hallway. Anytime there’s movement at the door, it alerts my phone,” Massimo said. “I’ve kept her away from the Morelli family for years because I knew she wouldn’t be able to keep quiet about what happened to her.”
“No, she did not. She told us everything,” Lorenzo confirmed, “It took very little prodding to get her to open up. She was half out of her mind from the drugs and rambling. It didn’t take long for us to piece it all together.”
Massimo nodded. “I hate her almost as much as I do him,” he confessed. “She’s weak. We could have had a good life with Vinny far away from here, but she was afraid to leave because of her love forhimand for the drugs he supplied her with.”
“You could have walked away from this, Massimo. You could have walked away from this plan at any time and had two brothers and three sisters to call family.” Lorenzo was slow-moving, but the moment he got to me, he shoved me behind his back and motioned for Gia and Nic to get behind him as well. “We would have made room for you in our family.”
“I don’t want to be in your family. I don’t want Luca Morelli’s blood flowing through my own damn veins,” he hissed. He was so focused on Lorenzo and us that he didn’t see the men coming up behind him. Romeo was there, along with a few other men I didn’t recognize.
“We couldn’t agree more,” Romeo’s cold voice sliced through the air right before he pulled the trigger; the loud crack of the gun echoed through the room, bouncing off the hard surfaces.
As soon as Massimo crumpled to the ground, Lorenzo spun around and pulled me into his arms and against his chest, and I breathed in his scent. He kissed my hair and rubbed his hands up and down my arms. “Shhh,” he tried to calm me, but I wasn’t in the mood to be calmed. “It’s okay. I’m here now. It’s over.”
It was over. He wasn’t hurt. That thought had me pushing out of his arms in anger. I took him in just to make sure there were no bullet holes in him. “He could have shot you,” I cried at him angrily. “What were you thinking?” I shoved his shoulder, but it did nothing to move his body.
Lorenzo smiled and pulled me into his arms, kissing me hard and quick for the whole world to see.
“It’s true then?” Gia murmured from somewhere beside us. “You two are married?”
Lorenzo pulled back from the kiss, but didn’t let me go. He wrapped his arm around my shoulders and held me close to his side. “Yes. We got married while we were in Atlantic City.”
“And the stuff about the cartel?” Nic spoke up, glancing from Lorenzo to our brother, who had made his way across the room to us.
“True,” Romeo confirmed. “Though the marriage was only supposed to be in name to protect Bianca from having to marry Arias.” He cocked his head. “Doesn’t look like an annulment will be possible.”
“No,” Lorenzo said firmly. “And there’s no need for a divorce either.”
Romeo nodded. “You’re already family. I guess this just makes it official.”
“What the hell is going on?” The question was roared from across the room, drawing all attention from us to the entrance where our father and Gino stood.
Luca Morelli sneered at the men standing in the room with us like they were shit on his shoes. “Do you care to explain why there are two corpses on my living room floor?”
“There’s a lot of explaining that needs to be done, Father, but not by us. By you.” Anger laced his voice. “Raf, take my sisters upstairs and make sure they don’t come back down.”
The man that I had seen come in with my brother stepped forward. Giana moved to go the long way around the room so as not to get close to the bodies or our father. Nic followed behind her, her eyes trained on the man across the room. I stayed beside Lorenzo, not wanting to leave the safety of his arms.
Before he loosened his arm from my shoulders and guided me to follow behind my sisters, he kissed the side of my head and whispered, “Go, Princess.” I didn’t know what was about to happen with our father, but he made his bed long ago, and I couldn't feel even the smallest amount of sympathy for whatever was going to happen to him or Gino.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Lorenzo
“It’s done.” I sat down in the office on the leather couch and took the glass of whiskey that Romeo offered me.
